SEX FOR RENT: ‘Bedroom in return for cooking, cleaning and oral once or twice a week’

It’s a Friday evening in central London and I’m sat across the table from a 25-year-old man who is offering to share his east London bedroom with me, rent-free. The catch? I’ll have to have regular sex with him if I want to keep a roof over my head.

The man I’m talking to thinks I’m a 24-year-old nursing student with no alternatives. He lives in a house share in London – but says his housemates won’t be a problem, as we can pretend I’m his girlfriend.

When I express reluctance, he tries to convince me he is a better alternative to “those older guys” offering rooms online. “It’ll be fun,” he says. “Trust me.”

He is not the only man offering rent for sex. When I log on to a popular classified adverts website, almost immediately I find dozens of ads offering rooms in exchange for “adult arrangements”.

These ads come from all over the UK, from Brighton to Edinburgh, in big cities and in small towns. I begin replying to the adverts.

Within minutes I receive sexually explicit responses. One landlord immediately asks me for my body and bra size, another says we can “chat on WhatsApp, as long as you’re happy to come to an arrangement”.

I arrange to meet a number of landlords – and am stunned by the diversity of people I meet. One is just 24 years old, another is offering up his daughter’s bedroom now that she’s at university, and a third says I can stay in a log cabin he built in his back garden – if I’m willing to have sex with him in return. Most of the landlords I meet live alone, but one says he has tenants, and then there’s the guy who lives in a London house share who wants to tell his housemates I’m his girlfriend.

The 24-year-old landlord, who I meet in Scotland, says he’s looking for “sex every second day or something” and tells me he is “taking the human aspect out” of sex. “I’m treating it as a business transaction,” he says.

I’ve portrayed myself to these men as a vulnerable young woman who is struggling financially and has nowhere to go. I’m struck by how nonchalant these landlords appear while asking me to sleep with them in order to keep a roof over my head. They don’t seem to consider how I might be affected by what they’re asking of me.

In fact, most of the landlords don’t seem to feel they’re doing anything wrong – but Rent For Sex adverts could be illegal. Offering a room in a house in exchange for sex might be classified as incitement into prostitution, which carries a prison sentence of up to seven years in England and Wales.

In fact, when I wrote to the landlords after our meetings to reveal the investigation and ask for their response, only two replied. One said he was looking for a consensual sexual agreement and had done nothing wrong, while another said his intentions were innocent and he only wanted a couch-surfing arrangement – where he’d allow me to stay on his sofa free of charge.